2011 marks the 175th anniversary of the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) that traces its origins to 1836 and the commitment of the second US Army Surgeon General, Thomas Lawson (1789–1861), to purchase books and journals for active-duty medical officers. The occasion affords an opportunity to focus on the contributions of the NLM to the history of medicine and public health, and to look forward into the digital world of the twenty-first century as the NLM joins with like-minded institutions, scholars, educators, writers, students, and others to expand knowledge of medical and public health history for the advancement of scholarship across the disciplines and for the education of the general public. As more audiences become interested in medical and public health history, opportunities abound to broaden and deepen understanding of the past, present, and future of medicine and public health in order to help refine critical thinking about medicine and science, promote deeper understanding of medical and scientific concepts, and generally humanise medicine and public health by revealing the implications of disease and healthcare for individuals and communities in the United States and around the world.

Irregular practitioners (‘quacks’) specialising in male sexual problems succeeded in nineteenth-century New Zealand by taking advantage of the growing population of unattached men who were ignorant of their own sexual physiology. The irregulars also profited from the regular practitioners’ acceptance of ill-defined or imaginary male sexual disorders and the side effects of conventional venereal disease treatments, the lack of a clear demarcation between quacks and the regular medical profession, and an increased availability of newspaper advertising. Improvements in the postal system enabled quacks to reach more potential customers by mail, their preferred sales method. The decline in quackery resulted from scientific advances in the understanding of disease and government legislation to privilege regular practitioners and limit quacks’ access to postal services and advertising.